


A Lover Like That

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pennywise (IT) is Defeated in the First Battle, Coming Out, Everybody Lives, Karaoke, M/M, Stan Lives, They Have a Reunion Anyway, the gang's all here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 20:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21082505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When Richie Tozier was a kid, he and his friends killed a demon clown-- for good.Over time, everyone got the hell out of Derry, and it's been over a decade since he's seen any of them in the flesh, well over that long since they faced the literal embodiment of their fears. Now that everyone is getting together again, Richie has one last fear to face.





	A Lover Like That

**Author's Note:**

> edit: fixed a line that got cut off somehow!

He and Bill are in the same neck of the woods now-- Bill had had some time traveling to film sets, and some more time off in a cabin in the woods somewhere to just write, but now he's settled, not far from Richie at all, and that's what triggered the talk of a big reunion.

Richie's feelings are mixed, as they set up group calls and texts to work out the logistics. He misses everyone, he misses them with an unfathomable sharpness sometimes. He hates that it's been so long since he's done anything with any of them, since he's just been able to throw his arm around someone's shoulders. He doesn't... he doesn't have other friends like the ones he had growing up. Well, no one else fought a monster clown with him. But it's more than that. He can't connect so easily to new people, he never could, beyond the superficial level. People like him fine-- if they don't hate him, at least. If they don't hate him, they love him. But it's not real love. It's charm or it's wit, and it's every layer of armor he puts up between himself and the world.

There are fewer of those, with his friends. People he actually feels comfortable with, touching and being touched by.

There's one, really. One layer of armor, one secret, and he really, really, _really_ wants to get rid of that for good. It's dogged him long enough. It's time.

Plus, if anyone had a problem with it, Bill's new house is fucking huge, anyone who didn't want to stay with Richie could just go over to Bill's.

As the planning goes on, everyone's opting to stay at Bill's anyway, because his place is new and-- as mentioned-- fucking _huge_, and Bill keeps trying to convince Richie to come stay at his place for a couple nights so they can all have a sleepover like old times, but Richie hasn't been a kid in a long time, and his spine will not thank him if he voluntarily abandons his beautiful mattress for a futon in Bill's game room or whatever. Richie has been angling to get Stan to take his guest room, and trying not to get in an outright childish fight with Bill about who Stan loves more when Bill brought up the 'everyone under one roof' thing again to lure him away, and for a week of the planning phase, Eddie had been saying he couldn't come, he couldn't come, he'd do a video call with the group of them when they were together, he hated that he couldn't come, and then...

And then Eddie had texted Richie-- not the group text-- to say he'd take his guest room. Sure, he'd gone on to say as much to the others, and to tell Stan it was too late to take Richie up on the offer, he was stuck wherever Bill wanted to put him-- not that Richie couldn't have put him on a couch, but the fact that Eddie could come after all... It furthers Richie's resolve, but it also makes him all the more terrified of how it could go.

He shouldn't be, he tells himself. It's not like it was when they were kids, and his friends are open-minded, caring people who love him. All he has to do is set the tone, make it feel normal. And maybe if he can do that with them, he can do that for himself, just... as part of his life. And then someday, maybe he can joke about it. Like, write his own jokes about it.

Eddie is a ball of energy when Richie picks him up at the airport, and he has way too many suitcases.

"Is this why you picked me over the slumber party at Big Bill's?" Richie teases, getting them loaded in the back of his car. "So you'd have space for all your stuff? A closet all to yourself?"

"Don't be an asshole." Eddie rolls his eyes. "Yeah, I chose you for your closet space."

"Well, it'll be wide open." Richie opens the passenger side door for him, and fights the urge to throw up. Eddie's smile is something soft and private, just for a moment, as he gets in.

And then, of course, they're bickering over the music and over a thousand other little things, but it's good, familiar bickering, no heat and no vitriol. It reminds him of when he thought he could do fencing, back in college-- back when he'd thought he might finish college. What it was like to spar with someone, to take a blade with no real edge and no real point and see if you could land a blow. Of course he'd almost immediately discovered that he did not have what it took for something that turned out to be a real sport. Reality had not been as fun as his fantasy of what a fencing class might be like. But that's what 'fights' with Eddie remind him of now. Only he has the focus stamina to keep at it with Eddie for hours.

If he were a better friend, he thinks, he would ask about Myra. Instead he asks Eddie about everything but, and Eddie gives rapid-fire answers, and listens to Richie's ramblings in return. He gets the grand tour of Richie's beachside bungalow, colorful and cozy-- and clean, thanks to the frantic efforts he'd put in once he knew Eddie was coming. He shows him where everything is in the kitchen, offers him use of the master bath if the half bath in the hall doesn't suit his needs, and most importantly, shows off the view from his deck

"Wow, Rich, I'm impressed." Eddie shoots him a sly, sidelong look. "I wasn't expecting your place to look like an adult lives in it."

"Gee, thanks." He grabs him, reeling him in to ruffle his hair out of place. "What do you think, though?"

"I think you're going to have a hard time getting rid of me. You wake up to this view every morning?"

"Sometimes I wake up to it in the afternoon, but yeah. I mean-- a lot of working at night, when you're a comedian." He shrugs, and doesn't say he won't be trying very hard to get rid of Eddie, not ever. "It's the sunsets that are really spectacular, though, out here. I thought tonight we could eat out here with the view. Get an early night so we can get dragged into whatever those other Losers want to do. I, um... I actually cook. I cook now."

"Really?" And Eddie's smile is bright, as he tries to fix his hair, and Richie wants to tell him he's beautiful just like he is, and he doesn't.

"Yeah, I cook. I thought I'd-- Since you'd probably want to stay in after flying? I mean we'll be going out with everyone tomorrow anyway, and there'll be plenty of opportunities to show you the good places, but..." He shrugs. "Tonight you can just kick back."

"I'll have to return the favor sometime while I'm here. I'm gonna grab a shower, I always feel gross after flying. And, um... yeah, that sounds great."

Richie gets to work in the kitchen while Eddie's in the shower. He's not an incredibly accomplished cook, by any means, but he knows a few things he can do well, and how to put together a plate that looks impressive enough even if no one part of it was hard to do. When Eddie emerges, he's wearing loose grey sweats and a tight maroon tee, and his hair is wet, and Richie is just glad he's not trying to do anything with a knife.

"Anything I can help with?"

"You can carry the wine out." Richie points out the bottle. "Glasses and silverware's on the table, I'll be right behind you with the plates."

It shouldn't feel so gratifying, to see the little smile and the way Eddie's eyebrows lift when he looks at the label. Richie doesn't tell him that he asked the guy at a wine store what to serve, let alone that he'd told the wine store guy he really wanted to impress the person he'd be dining with.

Eddie leaves the sliding glass door open for him, pads out onto the deck in his slippers and pours the wine for both of them. A little table for two, chairs angled out towards the ocean view... it would be romantic if Eddie didn't have a wife. Richie sets their plates down with a flourish before going to shut the door.

"Gluten free spaghetti with marinara and those fancy-ass curls of shaved parmesan, because yes I am aware that parmesan is a low-lactose cheese suitable for anyone with a real or fake insensitivity. And turkey meatballs. And roasted broccoli with also fancy-ass curls of shaved parmesan."

"I told the group chat I was gluten free now?"

"You might have mentioned it a half a dozen times." Richie snorts. What Eddie had really said was that _Myra_ had him on a gluten free diet, and that he hadn't noticed any difference yet but she had researched it a lot. Every other month it seemed like she had some idea of what he needed to cut from or add to his diet. She'd gotten really into kombucha, but that one didn't last too long, given the violent reaction Eddie's stomach had to it on his first try. She'd decided his problem was not enough probiotics and poured drinkable yogurt down his throat. She'd said no coffee a while back and he'd detailed every one of his illicit trips to Starbucks like he was in a confessional. And so Richie thinks putting Eddie on a gluten free diet is _stupid_ and he resents Myra for just about everything, but he's not going to push Eddie to eat something he's currently not doing. There's nothing inherently wrong with gluten free pasta.

Of course, if Eddie wants to break Myra's diet while he's here, Richie is more than happy to support that. But he's not going to push him when the choice should be Eddie's. He's not going to be just as bad as she is.

"Ah. Well... thanks." Eddie lifts his wine glass. "And thanks for having me."

"Any time."

And dinner goes so well, too-- Eddie makes _noises_, over the closest thing Richie has ever made to legit health food, _noises_, and he says Stan is missing out and he should have jumped on Richie's invitation back when he had a chance, only he shouldn't have, because Richie and his cooking are all Eddie's.

"All yours." Richie says, his heart lurching. "Anyway, if I was cooking for Stan, I'd have to get... meatless balls, or some fucking thing."

"Meatless balls aren't bad. It's just getting the right brand."

"I'm a man who likes his balls meaty, the way God intended." He gestures with his fork, and watches Eddie try to hide the fact that he's laughing. "I am definitely not alone in those preferences. I know for a fact--"

"Asshole, if you say 'your mom likes meaty balls', I will kick _your_ meaty balls."

Richie doubles over against the table laughing. "I was just going to say-- nah, man, I was just going to say, you prefer beef to turkey. The first time you had a turkey burger, you called it bullshit."

"... It grew on me. Red meat isn't heart healthy, Myra has concerns. And if you think ground turkey is bullshit--"

"_You_ think it's bullshit, but go on."

"-- You didn't have to make it."

"Yeah, well... you're on this diet, so. What was I gonna do, make food you couldn't eat?"

"Maybe I could. I mean... _once_ in a while. Have a burger or something while I'm out here."

"Cheers to that." Richie clinks his glass against Eddie's, gently.

"You were right about the sunsets." Eddie says. "It's beautiful."

"Yeah. Sure is."

-

Richie doesn't know whose idea the karaoke bar had been, but it makes Eddie complain so much that Richie is automatically on board. And then, suddenly, he finds himself in a room with all of his friends, with long-missed hugs and the weight of a secret he wants to share with them all at once, and words that will not come. But they all crowd into one of those private booths with its own set-up, and in the tight space, he feels like he's home again.

So he cheers Stan's slow crooning 'Put Your Head on My Shoulder', and Ben's enthusiastic rendition of 'The Right Stuff', and Bev and Mike each pull out songs he doesn't even know, and Bill _mangles_ Whitesnake, but they're all having fun.

"Don't you get up in front of people for a living." Eddie needles him, as Bill takes his final bow. "Shouldn't you be up there?"

"I'm not a singer."

"You can't be worse than Bill was." Stan says, ducking a swat from Bill.

"And we liked him anyway, so we're going to like you." Ben adds, and it's not like Richie ever took much convincing, where grabbing a microphone was concerned, but even if he did, Ben's so earnest about encouraging him... and Eddie is nudging at him and giving him these looks, so he lets Ben pull him to his feet and shove him into the spotlight.

Maybe it's divine inspiration, or maybe it's just weariness. He keys up his choice with a shaky hand, and he sings 'Jesse's got himself a girl, but I want to make him mine'. It's not hard to swap the 'her's out for 'him's, not hard to make 'woman' into 'lover'. And he manages not to really _look_ at any of his friends while he sings, because if he has to stop and think about how they're handling the pronoun shift, he's not going to make it. If he sees the way any one of them reacts to 'I wish that I was Jesse's girl', he's going to empty his guts in front of everyone.

"And I'm looking in the mirror all the time, wondering what he don't see in me--" And his eyes catch on Eddie's, the absolute worst possible place for his attention to stop, and his heart is a hummingbird trapped in his throat. "I've been funny, I've been cool with the lines, ain't that the way love's supposed to be?"

He turns away, seems to have to _wrench_ himself, closes his eyes tight as he finishes off the song with one last 'I want to be Jesse's girl', collapses shaking and sweaty into his chair and knocks back a shot of something he hopes is strong enough. They clap, he thinks, and whistle, same as for everyone, but he feels naked and raw and he can't focus and he can't...

He pushes his glasses up, presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. Someone grips his knee, warm and reassuring. The whole group shifts around him as people rise and change seats and pass drinks around and pile against each other in various combinations, and maybe that doesn't count as coming out exactly, but it's groundwork. When he comes out, he can point to this moment and say 'didn't you know?', and they can say they guess so, but right now, he doesn't think they understand just how momentous a thing it was for him just to do this much.

It feels like it's silent a long time after his performance. Not silent-silent, because his friends are laughing and talking, but it feels like it's a long time before the opening chords of a new song start, and then Richie's eyes snap open when it's Eddie's voice wrapped warmly around 'Come to My Window', and Eddie meets his eyes, and just a moment of that is enough, and he hasn't got an easy name for the emotion he's feeling. It leaves him too drained even to applaud properly.

Ben all but picks him up when their time in the little booth-room is up and Stan walks him out to the rented minivan-- Stan had rented a minivan so that they would only need one designated driver, and then he'd drawn the short straw on driving designatedly, but he hadn't actually seemed upset at that. Richie doesn't know how to say he's not that drunk. Eddie, walking alongside them, whirls around-- and if he had been so drunk, that would have made him dizzy-- a manic light in his dark eyes, a determined set to his chin.

"I want a hamburger." He says. He grabs Richie's wrist. "Maybe a cheeseburger, with processed cheese. On a bun! And fries. And a _milkshake_, I have tablets for lactose intolerance, I can drink a milkshake, I could have been drinking milkshakes all my life!"

"You'll have to talk to Stan about that, he's driving."

"Stan, take me to McDonalds."

"We have food at home." Stan says, far too smugly.

"Stan, take him to In-n-Out and I will buy him and you whatever you want." Richie says.

"You all want to eat that junk in a _rental_? No sauce, no ketchup, and I will drive us through In-n-Out. And Eddie, you better have those tablets _on_ you before you drink a fucking milkshake in this van."

"No sauce? You're a monster." Richie accuses, but he hugs him, too, with the arm Eddie isn't holding onto. Eddie... Eddie, who recaptures his attention with a slight tug. "Are you always such a rebel when you get a couple drinks in you? Breaking your diet, bad boy?"

"It's Myra's diet." He says, high spots of color on his cheeks and a grin splitting his face. "And she can keep it. She can keep whatever she wants, but she can't keep me. I'm getting a divorce!"

"Milkshakes for everyone, milkshakes are on me!" Richie laughs, detaching himself from Stan and pulling Eddie into a hug. "Dude, it's about time. For real, not just because you're drunk off your ass?"

"I'm not that drunk. And-- no. I knew before I came out. Because she didn't want me to come out, and I thought... and I thought I just won't ever go back."

Eddie does have lactaid tablets in the zippered pocket of his cardigan, because of course he does. And Bill has spare toothbrushes so that Eddie and Richie can crash at his place and drive back to Richie's in the morning. The futon in Bill's game room isn't ideal, but Eddie slides into it with him like he used to when they were kids, and mock fights over prime real estate at slumber parties always ended in the two of them curled up side by side, sharing a private little bubble in the darkness.

"Rich?" Eddie whispers.

"Mm?"

"Do you remember my wedding rehearsal?"

"Yeah." Richie's hands itch to do something, anything. He tucks the blankets up over Eddie's shoulder just a little more firmly.

"You pretended to be someone objecting to the wedding... I remember you laughed and said we had to be prepared for if _someone_ did it, and you were just being helpful, and I thought Myra was going to murder you right there in front of the priest. Do you know something?"

"I don't know _anything_, Eds. You know that."

"I wanted you to do it. To do it for real. I was lying in my bed that night imagining you pulling a fucking Graduate and... I don't know, the two of us on a bus, just... heading away. And the whole ceremony, you were there at my elbow and I kept waiting for you to say something, or to drag me out... and I realized how much I didn't want to be married. But it was too late..."

"Eddie..."

"I always used to feel bad for them, at the end of the Graduate, because it's fine, you know, having that big romantic moment, but then they have to deal with the fallout, and they don't have any guarantees they can make it together... it just seemed kind of sad to me. And then I thought, if you saw how wrong it was, me and Myra, and you took me out of there, and we got on a bus, it wouldn't be like that. It wouldn't be sad and I wouldn't be afraid of what comes after. It would just be us."

"Doesn't he fuck her mom in that movie?" Richie asks. He aims for levity and falls far short. His voice cracks.

"You _would_ remember that part."

"I wanted to."

"Yes, we know, fuck my mother--"

"Stop your wedding. Run off with you. I think the Graduate is kind of a stupid movie but I mean, I would have... if I didn't think it was super fucking selfish and that I'd be ruining your life, I mean, I would have... really wanted to run away with you."

"Is it too late for second chances?" Eddie asks, his hand coming to brush across Richie's cheek.

"Never. I guess I really am just not going to get rid of you now. Moving myself out of the closet and your crap into it and you're just... stuck with me 'cause I come with the house."

"I'm choosing you. Asshole." He smiles. "Now come over here and kiss me."

Who is Richie to refuse him?


End file.
